The Digital Literacy Center project was geared to increasing digital literacy skills for a primarily adult audience of traditionally under-served community members, including senior citizens, homeless, and low income residents. Here are some highlights and findings from this work:

• We conducted 24 classes, as well as 37 individualized “drop in” tech help sessions, four school sessions, and seven train-the-trainer classes.
• The program was enthusiastically received with 98.9% of participants reporting learning something by participating in the program. 94.3% said they were more likely to participate in a similar library activity in the future.
• The audience served was very diverse, ranging from those with very basic technology skills to those with more advanced proficiencies. The most popular classes were those related to smart phones and small business marketing.
• The audience for the help sessions varied, but tended toward those with lower levels of technology proficiency. The most requested help topics were in using smartphones and recovering and managing passwords.
• There is a big demand for both formal tech classes and informal tech help. The range of skill levels and types of questions along with the high degree of variability in individual device configurations requires flexible and experienced staff to meet these needs.
• Through professional development that was offered (both formally and informally), the library staff not only gained new skills, but began to see themselves in a role to provide technical support and other non-traditional services. This was a huge move forward for the library and its patrons.
• The curriculum developed for this program will be used in other parts of the county in 2019-20.

The expansion of the Creativity in a Box work allowed us to put these boxes in more locations around the county, to conduct 15 creativity-oriented workshops (primarily but not exclusively for youth), and to create new “Workshop in a Box” kits.

As we increased the reach of the program, implementation fidelity varied. Not surprisingly, the closer we were to the implementation (e.g. facilitating events vs. supplying resources and materials to others to implement), the more successful the results were. (This is a reminder that “train the trainers” type models are challenging.) At times, it was difficult to get information back from larger libraries that were not under county management. Staff changes were also a challenge. In addition, larger libraries seemed to struggle more with non-traditional resources like these. More professional development and support could help with this.

One of the most successful kits was the “Photo Challenge” kit, which includes 10 digital cameras, instructions, and photo challenges for kids to complete. This workshop is super-easy to conduct and is one of the most popular with participants, who have ranged from ages 2 to teenagers and even parents. Another very popular workshop is tie dyeing.

Overall, the project was a success with over 600 people participating, and 84.5% reporting that they learned something by participating. Importantly, there are a large number of resources (including 24 “Creativity in a Box” kits, four “Workshop in a Box” kits, and refills of consumables for all of this) that will be available to the nine participating libraries for years to come.

Sustainability is always a big consideration in the grants we administer. It is important to us that the work that is put into a grant be able to continue on after the grant funding concludes. (For example, our Free Book Box project is still going strong a couple years after the initial funding cycle.)

For 2019-20, we have on tap a Mobile Technology Lab project that will make a mobile lab of laptops available to smaller rural branches and will also expand our offering of tech literacy classes and individual help sessions. We are also going to be doing another oral history project. The first work we did in this area was in Portal. This new work will be more extensive and involves another local community.

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Like the previous year’s Making and Sharing/”Creativity in a Box” project, this was funded by the Arizona State Library, Archives & Public Records, a division of the Secretary of State, with federal funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, through a grant that I wrote in partnership with our county library district.

The Free Book Box project is a variation on the “little free library” idea, except that our boxes are quite large and institutionally supported and maintained. Each box is approximately the size of a bathtub and holds about 150 books.

The idea for this came in part when our county’s book mobile had to cease operations. (It’s important to note, though, that these boxes in no way replace the book mobile.)

Our county is quite large (4 million acres or 6,219 square miles with a population of approximately 130,000) and has a number of rural communities that don’t have their own libraries. So we decided to install ten Free Book Boxes in the more rural parts of the county to enhance community access to books and reading materials, with each box housing a rotating selection of books for adults and children, in English and Spanish. One other difference with our boxes is that, while users are welcome to return or donate books, they don’t have to — all the books are free for the taking. Patrons are also invited to request books through comment cards in the boxes, though they aren’t “held” for specific individuals when they are added to the box.

Partnerships are a key part of this project. Partners have included the library system and various branches, schools, community organizations, and local businesses. For each box, we sought a community partner to help host, monitor, and stock the box, which was an important part of our sustainability plan. (We have hosts in place for some but not all the boxes.) In addition, we have had community artists paint each of the boxes.

The books for these boxes have come from a variety of sources. Some have been purchased (this was included in our grant), but we have also received tremendous donations. These have come from sources such as our libraries (discards, patron donations), Friends of the Library groups, a local college, and community members who have added books to the boxes. Again, this is going to be a key to the project’s sustainability.

As of today, we have installed seven of the ten boxes, and the others will be installed soon. The reception of this work in the community has been incredibly positive.

To date, we have distributed over 1,000 books with a goal to distribute over 3,000 in the first year.

This has been my favorite project of 2017, and I have every confidence that this work will continue long after the grant has ended.

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The session focused on various characteristics of the Net Gen and the consequences of those for schools. Here are some observations I took away from the session:

– Doug reeled off a long list of statistics of how the Net Gen is different from boomers or even Gen X. This made me feel old, but also to be happy to be living in a time of so much excitement, energy, and positive change.

– Students in the Net Gen WANT TO LEARN. They just may want to learn different content and with different methods than schools traditionally offer.

– It was suggested that the Dewey Decimal system is losing relevance. (This inspired defensive indignation in the crowd of mostly library media specialists in the audience.) Doug talked about user/student-generated tags as a more relevant system of organization. This is definitely a trend at NECC this year. Are organizations beginning to tag analog content like library books?

– Like others here, Doug encouraged us to be more flexible in allowing students to bring electronic devices, like iPods, handhelds, and even cell phones, to school. Again this is a theme here this year. Doug suggested including students on school and district planning committees to help administration understand the new paradigms of learning of this generation.

– On the subject of filtering, Doug says, “Safety comes from education, not blocking.” Doug’s site and handouts give some thoughtful ideas for how his district is handling these issues.

– Physical place is important. Schools need to be more comfortable and even fun environments. It strikes me that this could be done for little or no cost. I was at a university earlier this week that has done a lot of things like adding nicer student spaces, etc. while simultaneously generating revenue for the school. An associate dean there pointed out to me a Starbucks in the library and said that, while students love it, the librarians were not so happy with it.

– Librarians have a central role to play in information literacy and learning in the future.

See his web page for more thought-provoking details.

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